


Palinode

by Faemonic



Series: Songs of the Sunsets [1]
Category: Otherfaith Religion & Lore
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4816025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faemonic/pseuds/Faemonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Althea Altair swears that after this, she is <em>never</em> doing field work again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Bad Day For Everybody Involved

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Calling + Consent](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652139) by [Aine Llewellyn (Mapon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapon/pseuds/Aine%20Llewellyn). 
  * Inspired by [Lilibell of Two Hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652433) by [Aine Llewellyn (Mapon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapon/pseuds/Aine%20Llewellyn). 
  * Inspired by [The Bone Box](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652052) by [Aine Llewellyn (Mapon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapon/pseuds/Aine%20Llewellyn). 
  * Inspired by [The Red Room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652499) by [Aine Llewellyn (Mapon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapon/pseuds/Aine%20Llewellyn). 
  * Inspired by [The Red Room (Epistolary Steampunk Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789274) by [Faemonic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faemonic/pseuds/Faemonic). 
  * Inspired by [Founding of the West](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651782) by [Aine Llewellyn (Mapon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mapon/pseuds/Aine%20Llewellyn). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For information about Adilene and Mircea, please refer to [Calling + Consent](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4652139). The adventures of Adilene's twin daughters were introduced in [Lilibell of Two Hearts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4652433). 
> 
> This chapter also crosses over with [The Bone Box](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4652052), and future chapters mainly retell [The Red Room](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4652499).

The Clarene’s declaration of outrage came through the celphone loudly enough for Pallis to flinch away from it. At that moment, the traffic began to move, and as Pallis shouldn’t have been on the phone while he was at the wheel, Irene reached over to take the phone from him, and then to try to explain herself—although how Irene could do that without a tongue, she hadn’t wondered. She hadn’t needed to: the call had already ended by the time she put it to her ear.

Pallis noted, as he changed gears and took a turn for the highway, “I hardly started. She isn’t angry with _you_.”

If the remark didn’t seem to comfort the princess of Peace and Quiet, that was because it wasn’t.

“At least we know where to meet her.” The star nudged his head in a direction somewhere out the window on Irene’s side. Irene turned and peered, just so that Pallis would turn his attention back to the road. Two static blobs on a distant hill marked the gate to the West, and one moving dot between them must be the Clarene.

A flicker like star fire burst near the head of the other dot. Irene gasped as a pang of dread struck her heart.

“What is it?” Pallis asked, leaning over the front passenger seat. 

Irene was about to point, but even as she squinted she couldn’t see the flare again. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. Why would a trick of the light give her pangs?

Instead, she turned to Pallis and gave a firm and gentle push with one hand, her other hand pointing to the windshield and the highway beyond it.

Pallis drove on, and then (after some argument) dropped her off by the gate. Irene walked up the hill and approached the Clarene just as the King of the West was dusting her hands off. The princess and king looked admirably at the marble slab that made the bone box for a moment, dwelling on the words engraved upon it by the Clarene’s fingernail (a fingernail that hadn’t even been filed down.)

In the next moment, the Clarene glanced at Irene, then fixed her gaze upon Irene: hair shorn short where it had once grown beyond her ankles, and as for her ankles and feet, they were raw with burns and bleeding from molten drops or solid splinters of glass.

“Walk with me to the Orchard,” the Clarene said. With a single step, there they both were, at the edge of a clearing. In the center of a clearing sat a red woman on a red-and-white gingham picnic blanket. She looked up from her tablet when they approached, and reached out to the Clarene as the king bent over to kiss her. Clarene added, “What a pleasant surprise it is to find you here, Adilene. I had only dropped in for some aloe leaves.”

Adilene replied, “The princess should have none of that and more than that. Should I explain that statement?” She had directed that last part to Irene herself.

Irene hesitated for a moment, and still winced as she nodded.

Adilene swiped the screen of her tablet and explained, as if reading off it. Irene had gone to the Laetha Firebird’s nest and stolen a feather that she had then kept in her mouth. The pinion burnt away the princess’ tongue. Whatever reason Irene had, the Firebird did not care for; whatever excuse Irene offered, the Firebird cared for even less: Irene and the Ophelia had become fast friends, the Firebird and the Ophelia even faster in the opposite direction. For the violation of sacred space, Irene’s injury and remorse was no justice. The Firebird had demanded that Irene journey throughout the West, to make amends to each and every shard of the Laetha.

After hearing this report, the Clarene pronounced, “That sounds fair.”

“It’s hypocrisy,” Adilene argued. She drew back a swathe of gingham from her lap and said, “The Firebird has done worse to people for less.”

Irene stepped back with a startled shout at the sight of more fire where she had expected Adilene’s legs to be. The Clarene and Adilene exchanged glances, and at a murmur from Adilene the Clarene promptly left the orchard without taking Irene with her.

Adilene moved over to one side of the picnic blanket and patted the space where Irene could sit. Again, the same dreadfully cold fire was gone in a moment, so Irene went to sit beside her. Adilene assured the princess, “You weren’t going to get laid again for a long while, anyway.”

Irene grumbled some wordless argument.

“Do you think I’m jealous of you? Clarene’s beloved from three names ago? No.” Adilene put her hand out to cup Irene’s chin and jaw. Irene opened her mouth to reveal the stump of a tongue within. “I might envy this,” Adilene said, “That you can heal. The fires that consumed me were different.” She pulled away, returning to her tablet-swiping. “I’ll help you enough that one day you can tell the Clarene everything.”

Irene raised an eyebrow at that. The princess reached out and waved a hand between Adilene’s face and the tablet, just to draw attention to her own doubtful facial expression.

“You’re rude,” Adilene said, refusing to answer the unspoken question. “You’ve been rude since we’ve first met. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, least of all to you.” Her hands shook as she pressed at the screen. “But this is how your grand epic quest is going to go. First, find Althea Altair. On your behalf, I’ve requested a stipend from the temples of the Firebird. Everything after that is up to the both of you.”

If Irene still had a tongue, she would have immediately argued against needing Adilene’s charity. When she saw the tension in the red woman’s shoulders, felt the tremor in the ground between them from Adilene’s body, and saw her eyes darting nervously from the tablet to Irene’s face—Irene put her own hand to her own chest and bowed her own head at Adilene in gratitude.

“You’re welcome,” Adilene replied, coldly. “But you’re not. Get out. Don’t try to heal your burns with aloe leaves, either—you’re allergic.”

*

So, it went that Irene made amends with every shard of Laetha. Althea Altair had given Irene benediction with a handshake that burnt the lines from the palm of Irene’s hand, and then recommended that Irene put aloe on it, and that way Irene discovered that Adilene had been correct. 

Asier had heard from Pallis what the Firebird had demanded of Irene and together they paid Irene a visit in her apartment just for Asier to say, “It’s just like…whatever, you know? Yeah. I dunno.” Irene hadn’t known what to say to that even if she could have said something to that. 

Ava and Alma challenged Irene to a battle in robotic armor, a challenge that their older selves would take on; one of them only accepted amends if Irene defeated her, and the other only accepted amends if Irene allowed herself to be defeated. (Althea Altair later assured Irene that it had all worked out.) 

Then Artois complained about all the other Laethas so much that Irene wondered if it had counted as “making amends” just to listen to her, or if Irene had further participated in some injury to the Laetha. (Althea Altair, now an established touchpoint, assured Irene that it had been the latter.)


	2. The Evening News

One evening, like many evenings, Irene and Althea Altair sat in front of the television at Irene’s place—Althea stretched out on the sofa, Irene sitting on the floor in front of the sofa’s armrest. With bamboo chopsticks, they ate crooked noodles out of cardboard boxes, and drank colored corn syrup water that claimed to be tea and juice but had never seen the orchard.

“Was that really the series finale?” Althea’s rhetorical question was muffled by noodles. “Either it’s going for open-ended but the writers were sloppy about it, or it’s a cliffhanger because showrunners are still banking on a renewal. Or feature film.”

Irene shrugged as she slurped her own noodles. She had stopped watching seasons ago. The ritual was more about the soothing lights and familiar voices drowning out the now-constant impulse to self-flagellate.

Then the news segment came on. The announcer was covering the _“…conclusion of the Aletheia 003 trial, which has set multiple precedences for laws in the West and promptly reverted those very same precedences. On location—”_

Althea swung her feet over so that she was sitting and said, “Pump up the volume, would you?”

Irene aimed the remote control at the screen and allowed the reporter to speak up.

_“...prosecution argued against equality as recognizable identicality, but of active agency and consent. Defense Attorney Portia argued against abstraction, on the grounds that agency must be recognizable despite differences. The defense then plead Conditioned Approach, as Aletheia 003 had limited interaction with those who were not Aletheia androids, and therefore saw no harm in introducing William to the sensitivities and perceptions standard to Aletheias.”_

The anchor said, _“But William had testified to expressing that he was being harmed, isn’t that so? That introduction involved modifying his body.”_

_“Repeatedly. Aletheia 003 had taken his protests as part of the process, and blocked the human’s avenues of escape.”_

Irene winced and shook her head as Althea swore.

The reporter continued, _“Portia plead that what Aletheia 003 called 'love' was in fact error data, which an anonymous-but-legitimized programmer spirit had testified to.”_

The anchor laughed humorlessly. _“That’s a last resort if I ever saw one, and a self-defeating one.”_

 _“Defeated, she is not. The final ruling was of rehabilitation over retribution, which stirred up great controversy among—”_ The reporter looked somewhere offscreen, then back to the camera, which began to shake as it followed the back of the reporter’s head and oustretched microphone. _“Here comes William now, we’ll see if we can get a statement from him. Will!”_

The news reporters began to crowd as the human descended the stairs. 

Althea crumpled up her now-empty noodle box. “Media circus,” she grumbled, as she left the room to toss what she’d crumpled into the compost heap. When she returned, she said, “The temple sent out de-notices for media coverage of your epic journey, by the way. You’re welcome.”

That was the first time Irene wondered if Althea Altair was related somehow to Adilene, but she didn’t wonder it enough to stick.

“Just so you know,” Althea added, “As soon as this is over I am _never_ doing field work again—”

Irene hissed at Althea to hush. William’s attorney had tried to make ‘no comment’ the only comment, but William pulled back and made his statement to the camera. _“Mercy excuses and rewards harm. If he were really going to change, he should know—not only here,”_ William pointed to his head, _“Or wherever he keeps what he knows—no, umm, he should be made to go through what he made me—”_

Althea Altair silently took the remote from beside Irene, and shut the television off. William’s haunted expression burned into Irene’s mind.

“You don’t want to get in the middle of that,” Althea told her. “But starting on the Aletheias is something that we’d get to eventually. Tomorrow we can go to the factory. After hearing what they’re capable of, are you up to it?”

Irene nodded.

*

Aletheia 001 stole Irene’s jaw and attached it to its chin, and Alice 02 returned it to Irene, and reattached it with the order that Irene shouldn’t bother the Alices by bothering the Aletheias.

Althea Altair told the Alice off, but Lily Bell called Althea’s cel for some emergency. Irene communicated that she would handle the rest herself, but decided not to stay in the factory.

Aster Aira sent Irene to a part of the North-South where time still repeated itself. Aster Aira sent Irene to a part of the North-South where time still repeated itself. Aster Aira sent Irene to a part of the North-South where time still repeated itself. Aster Aira sent Irene to a part of the North-South where time still repeated itself. Aster Aira sent Irene to a part of the North-South where time still repeated itself.

Arabella pulled Irene out of the North-South and apologized for the trouble, as Aster Aira had been more of a child of the Laetha than a Shard. After treating Irene out to brunch at a diner, Arabella confessed that she (Arabella) couldn’t forgive Irene for what she had heard the princess had done. The encounter left Irene discouraged and confused, and Althea recommended that they return to the Aletheias.


	3. Together They Fight Crime

Althea and Irene went to the Aletheia factory to find that it had been cordoned off with police tape. Althea recognized another Laetha shard standing in front, and called to her. “Alaria!”

“Althea Altair.” Alaria made a gesture of obeisance with an unhappy face. She nodded at Irene but addressed Althea. “I see that you found Peace and Quiet, then?”

“Never,” Althea replied. “What’s this about?”

“Complicated.” Alaria looked back at the factory and tutted. “Never sparks but bushfire.”

“Hmm.” Althea said, “What can you do?” 

“ _You_ can tell the jawless princess when you find her that ninety-nine Aletheias can’t be bothered to hold a grudge on the Firebird’s behalf. She’s absolved among them all. You can tick me off, too.”

“I’ll try.”

Irene applauded Althea Altair’s retort until Alaria and Althea turned both their heads slowly towards her. Then Irene gestured to the factory, as she frowned and pouted at Alaria.

Alaria heaved a sigh and gestured for them to follow her into the building. She flashed her badge, told the other investigators, “They’re with me,” and explained: “What we call a factory is mostly a service center, or a data archive. The actual machinery used for production is more for display. When it went over a hundred, and no units could be found, workers just thought the counter needed calibration, or maybe vermin set it off…”

“But it wasn’t,” Althea surmised. “More Aletheia robots were being produced, you say? Post-centennial units? We’re not even at war anymore.”

“Twenty units, unnumbered at the collar.” Alaria said, grimly. “Ten more last week.”

Irene noticed the security cameras in the upper corners of the halls, and elbowed Althea until she looked.

Althea asked Alaria, “What did you find on the feed?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, the first time around—those tapes were written over. Another reason it’s taken a month to investigate the theft.” Alaria entered a room, introduced them to the programmers, and said, “The newest footage of what should have been suspicious activity still turns up nothing, so I’d say that it had been tampered with. Our biggest clue was strange activity with the cloud. Newer models of Aletheia allow for some hiving-off of consciousness into android bodies. They used to back themselves up periodically here. The newest models can upload data in real time—that’s what the missing units are doing, but whether they’re doing that in tandem or one unit uploads duplicates under a new proxy is what we’re decoding now.” 

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Althea said.

“I won’t. The last few moments of each cycle is unpleasant and uninformative.”

“For whom, most of all?”

“As I said, uninformative. That part of the cloud—” Alaria pointed to a screen full of code “—behaves like a virus with its relentless replication of data, but it’s doing so too ploddingly to be automated.”

Irene squinted at the screen.

Althea muttered, “Maybe we should go through all that again. Princess Irene is an old world faery.”

“If I could explain it any more simply, I would. Somebody created Aletheias just to torture them. We’re trying to trace who is being tortured and who is doing the torturing.”

Irene cleared her throat and wriggled the fingers of both her hands in the air in front of her.

“What,” Alaria said flatly, “What is that? You’re going to tickle somebody? You can do magic like the Aletheias? Anne Marie and Mary Anne should spook the culprit?”

Even Althea was momentarily puzzled. “You want to play the piano? Oh.” Understanding dawned. “Keyboard. She wants to type something at us.”

Irene snapped her fingers and pointed at Althea to communicate that she was correct.

“Have you considered taking up sign language?” Alaria asked Irene, as she powered up her own laptop.

Althea answered for her, “Everybody in the West would have to learn it, too, for communication to be effective. Besides, if she’s been too busy to learn it then most other people would be. Charades is faster.”

Irene nodded. She’d written to Althea as much.

“We could put the entire city on a holographic grid. Anyone who wants to type something can just wiggle their fingers like that, wherever they are, maybe with fingertip sensors attached by nano-technology filled nail polish. One day.” Alaria opened a word processor on her personal laptop. Irene kept the capslock on.

YOU SPOKE OF NEWER ALETHEIA MODELS AND THE NEWEST ONES. WHAT ABOUT THE OLD?

Alaria answered, “Those aren’t factory models that you could upload or write in just anything. The Clarene made the first few, the original divine ones.”

BUT CAN NEW UNITS READ OLD DATA?

“There’s no reason that they can’t, but those haven’t ever gone to the cloud—”

UNTIL NOW. MAYBE AN OLD ALETHEIA EMBODIED IN NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE WOULD NOT BE AWARE OF ALL THE FEATURES. 

Althea leaned forward. “Irene, what are you thinking?”

Irene typed: I’M THINKING OF SOMEBODY WITH THE MOTIVATION TO PUT AN ALETHEIA THROUGH THE SAME PAINFUL THING OVER AND AGAIN.

At that, Althea looked doubtful. “Lots of people have motivations to do what they don’t have the means to do. If you’re talking about William the human, what…rewriting security records, hacking factory machines, manipulating tech in a world not his own, and not even leaving fingerprints for the investigators to find—”

“He’s not human,” Alaria interrupted. “After what 003 did to him? He’s more of a cyborg.”

CAN A CYBORG MORE EASILY REWRITE SECURITY RECORDS AND HACK FACTORY MACHINES THAN A HUMAN?

At that, the Laetha and priestess paused.

“Much,” Althea said.

“No,” Alaria said, “It depends. 003 didn’t really know what he was doing.”

WE CAN ASK A CYBORG WHAT A CYBORG CAN DO, CAN’T WE?

Alaria shook her head no, but said, “If by ‘we’ you mean you and Althea, then go. I need the whole team to focus on taking account of the latest pre-centennial units.”

So, Irene shook Alaria’s hand in thanks, and followed Althea who had already (unannounced) taken her leave of the premises.

Althea had already made a couple of calls by the time Irene had hopped into the front passenger seat of the priestess' car.


	4. Overload

William lived in a suburban residential district some ways out of town. Althea drove them, telling Irene how their approach would be on the way. At least Althea paid more attention to her driving, although this also meant that the priestess honked her car horn often and swore out the window. When the road was clear, Althea stopped talking entirely and would go slightly over the speed limit.

“Media circus has packed up and moved on. Good.” Althea parked by the sidewalk in front of William’s house. She summed up: “You’re an undergraduate of Eight Initiates researching android relations with other Western spirits. His voice in the 003 controversy is a potentially valuable one. I’m a priestess of Laetha who has taken a personal interest in your thesis development. I also act as your interpreter.”

Irene nodded and slammed a full clip into her gun to load it.

Althea sighed. “We won’t need that!”

*

They did need it. At least, Irene used it.

First, William opened the door and droned, “I don’t believe this.”

Althea put on a personable, formal smile so uncharacteristic that Irene wondered if Lily Bell had swapped places with her twin. “This is the time and place appointed. I’m sorry if this is a bad time after all, but you did have my number and could have rescheduled, and we’ve driven such a long way—”

“I didn’t want to reschedule. I wanted to tell you to your face that I didn’t believe anything that you told me.”

Then he let them in.

He led them both through a sliding door that looked just like a wall. As they walked, William spoke. He spoke calmly, but the things he said would have only made sense as afterthoughts to a confession that even Irene, with her elaborate suspicions, couldn’t clarify.

It was all made clear when he led them to the end of the hall, to a door vaulted from the outside with a wheel. He unlocked it and went inside, leaving the door open behind him.

On the ground, in view of the doorway, laid a new Aletheia model. It twitched, giving blurred whirring noises and turning its head in the direction of the newcomers.

Irene and Althea were so shocked that they didn’t notice when William hefted the electric cattle prod. 

“I had four more,” he said, “But after this one, I’ll have had enough. Aletheia 003Z.”

Althea exclaimed, “I’ll say you’ll have had enough right now! Drop your weapon!” Irene punctuated Althea’s shout by drawing her own gun. 

William did drop his weapon, driving the tip of the cattle prod into the exposed chips of the unfortunate android.

There was a dreadful flare of light. Irene fired at it until her bullets ran out, and then she kept pulling the trigger. She hadn’t aimed at the cattle prod once.

From the other side of the doorway, they had only seen the one broken android. After Althea called the people at the factory, they came into the room and found piles of parts that made up to twenty-six Aletheia units. 

The new models came with a pocket of indestructible material, so some core data had been preserved.

*

Later, the Ophelene accompanied Althea Altair and Irene to Aletheia 003’s prison cell. 

Althea continued to explain, “…and as Aletheia 003 had been set apart from the other units, the princess decided that Alaria’s generalization hadn’t included him.”

The Ophelene turned the memory bank over in her hands as they walked. “On a completely unrelated course, Alaria sent you to deliver this evidence of the human’s death to me?”

“That depends. Would Irene still be alive if you hadn’t reviewed the circumstances surrounding William’s death?” Althea waited for the silence to speak for the Ophelene. “Then it’s related.”

Aletheia 003, having remained apart from the Firebird for so long, didn’t understand what amends the faery princess had to make with him. “But,” he added, “If it must be for the record…I will…in exchange for a favor.”

Irene flinched.

“It’s nothing illegal—or even immoral,” Aletheia added, when he read the expression on Irene’s face. “You could say no. It was only worth asking if you could…”

Irene closed her eyes and steeled herself, predicting how the sentence would end.

“…get William to visit me…to stand where you are.”

“The answer’s no,” Althea told him. “We can’t.”

With her eyes still shut, Irene nudged her with her elbow to continue.

“Seriously?” Althea muttered to Irene. When Irene glowered, Althea turned to the android and said, “We can’t because William’s dead. Irene shot him.”

The Aletheia wailed in mourning even as Althea Altair shouted over him, “He was killing you! He wasn’t going to stop! Sacred hearts, what is wrong with the both of you?” Althea continued to explain how William snuck into the factory and produced unnumbered Aletheias. He would steal them away then upload some backup memory that 003 had shared with the human-turned-cyborg. William would set these Aletheia 003 units out into the world, perhaps remotely activate the programme, and then he would meet them. He would pretend that it would be their first meeting. For the Aletheia, it would be. Then he would proceed to lure them into a red room of his home and torture them into pieces, which was a feat—to dismantle the latest hardware available to androids designed for war.

“But the contraband models,” 003 said, “They have memories of their own. My memories, but not. How much of them are mine?”

Althea appeared confused by the question. “Up until the day you met him—”

The Ophelia interrupted, “By law, you hold Appropriate Rights for all your own experiences. Without any other autonomous form or association to claim any derivatives that they generated, ownership defaults to you rather than Commons.”

Aletheia 003 pondered this, and then said, “I want to download them. All the data that William added to all the versions.” He looked up at Irene and added, “Promise to do that for me, and I won’t break the prison walls down right now and kill you for what you did to William.”

“You might not be able to compartmentalize it,” Althea warned. “The A-to-Z’s were shades of you and didn’t deserve to have that happen to them. You definitely don’t, and what won’t that download do? It won’t bring William back.”

Aletheia 003 said, “I am willing to listen to his final message.”

The Ophelene pointed out, “He didn’t exactly put it in a way that you can grow and learn from.”

“Nobody else ever does. They don’t have to. I am free to try. I am willing to try.” The android looked to Irene again. “ _You_ understand that willingness, don’t you?”

Irene nodded.

As Irene and the Ophelene plugged the cables from the memory bank into Aletheia 003’s heart, Althea Altair stood away from the procedure. She had her arms crossed and lips pursed in disapproval.

As Aletheia 003 received the transfusion of memories, Irene and the Ophelene joined her.

Althea asked the Ophelene, “Rehabilitative?”

“I don’t relish retribution,” the Ophelene replied, “But I can understand it. The ruling to rehabilitate…I don’t know. Is it really best to change his nature to suit the greater community? Isn’t that what he did with William? Maybe his request should have been dismissed as error data, but I respected it as a request. As if from someone who knows what they're asking.”

Althea turned to Irene and said, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, really, what you’ve been doing all this time. But if 003 gets to Z and still blames you, it shouldn’t count. There really is something buggy with that bot.”

The Ophelene shifted uncomfortably and added, to Irene: “Unloading your entire arsenal into a human body might have been excessive.”

Irene kept her face carefully blank, though they both appeared to wait for a reply. In his cell, the Aletheia began to groan and whirr. When the Ophelene turned to check what was wrong, Althea muttered to Irene, “I saw it too.” She spread and fisted one raised hand in quick succession. 

The white fire. The dread. Irene gave her a concerned, questioning expression, but Althea had turned her attention to the Ophelene’s shout of warning. 

“Something’s going wrong with the upload!” The Ophelene jogged over to them. “The jacks have fused, run go get a technician!”

Irene bolted—past the Ophelene, towards the android’s cell instead.

The Ophelene overshot her and turned, shouting something at Irene. Althea Altair caught the god by the arm and pulled her back away from the princess.

Aletheia 003 exploded as Irene entered the cell, the flying shrapnel throwing her backwards against the wall. The hallway filled with billows of smoke. Irene felt herself sliding down the wall and fought it, pushing herself to her feet. Each step brought a jolt of pain, every sound in the world drowned out by a single constant note in her head, her ears, her mind. She lurched towards the smoldering cell, fanning the smoke away from her face. Althea Altair and the Ophelene dragged Irene back, although she struggled against them, and shouted, and began to weep.


	5. White Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song in this chapter is "Black Sheep" by Metric.

The healers had stitched Irene’s wounds with wire. After the wounds healed around the stitches, Althea took Irene back to the hospital where they cut the wires and pulled them—leaving puncture wounds where gashes once were.

As they waited in traffic, a song came on the radio that Althea began to sing along to. Irene drummed along to it, palms against the top of the glove compartment, and joined in with the chorus of “ooh-ooh”s, of which the song had a few.

“I’ll send you my looove, on a wiiire! Lift you uuup every tiiime everyooone…”

“Ooh-ooh!”

“…pulls away…”

“Ooh-ooh!”

“…from y— _ugh, forget it._ ” The syllable had soared so high that it made Althea’s voice break, though Irene reached the note easily with an ethereal warble.

“—ouuuuu!”

“Damn, I wanna have sex with your voice.”

Irene turned to her and blew a kiss into the air. She said, “Eeougaianaggng Iggy Bay oggaoing.” _We should start a band. Lily Bell should join._

“I’m going to see her after I drop you off. I’ll ask her then.”

“Yeah?” Irene chuckled, but a low mood overtook her the very next moment. After a few more moments of that, she opened the glove compartment, pulled a sheet of facial tissue, and let her eyes and nose seep tears into the gossamer softness.

Between the shrapnel coming in and the stitches coming out, Althea had learned to recognize Irene’s moods and let her have moments of privacy until they passed. This time, she spoke.

“They put him back together.” Althea informed her. “003. The divine Aletheias don’t archive their data, but Alaria had the backups that William made. She formatted one of the four remaining contraband units, uploaded the data until right before 003 met William…informed 003 of some data loss necessitating that his identity be transferred to new hardware…and left out what he did that is the reason that all Aletheia units have a diversity understanding patch now.”

Irene made a sound of protest.

“You should have saved that for the next thing I’m about to say: Alaria led the programmers into a debate with the Bookkeepers. Hardly anybody in the West is still wondering what happened to William, so the Aletheia archive is keeping all evidence that William ever existed under lock and key. With nobody to remember, the whole thing might as well have never happened.”

Irene protested again.

Though they were stuck in traffic, Althea put the car into park and turned to her. “Listen. Some things you can get to stop hurting you by ignoring it. Forgetting it. If most people wanted the truth, they would have searched for it—never stopping until they found it. They don’t because—I trust they know—what truth they find isn’t always going to be enlightenment. Sometimes, it’s just trouble. That’s why I won’t say a word—at least, not to anyone who can pass it on.” Althea added, quietly, dangerously: “Or are you really telling me that I should chop your hands off, too? Are you going to make trouble for yourself, your royal highness?”

In answer, Irene undid the clasp of her seatbelt and rattled the car door handle on her side until Althea let it open. Then she walked through the traffic until she found somewhere to rest.

*

Irene stopped by an automatic teller machine to withdraw the last of the stipend for that month, then she found a bar and dumped it in front of the barkeep.

“What’ll it be?”

She pointed to a bottle, then a shotglass.

“How many?”

As much as the pile of cash would afford.

The barkeeper poured out all the shots in a row along the bar. Irene was the only patron at that time, so this didn’t get in anyone’s way. The drink was supposed to be made from fermented potatoes, which was usually clear, but this was colored a translucent deep brown and had added flavors like milkless mocha. Irene knew the flavor from memory, of course, but what with not having a tongue anymore she could only taste the bitter fire.

_Althea wants me to forget all about it? I will._

From a particular angle, the shots all in a row looked almost like the segments of a giant centipede or millipede.

Irene took up the first shotglass and knocked the liquid into the back of her throat, squeezing her eyes shut as she swallowed. That drink was in memory of Aletheia 003A, William’s first stepping stone on the road to revenge.

She stamped the empty glass to her other side, reached for the next full shotglass on the line, and drank to Aletheia 003B, who was to William but sloppy seconds…

Segment by segment, she drank, moving down along the bar stools as the line shortened. Until darkness embraced her, and spoke in the Clarene's voice: “I’d ask if I could buy you a drink, but that wouldn’t be a good idea right now—”

*

Irene awoke somewhere inky-black, soothingly chilly, with top-notes of petrichor. Her head throbbed slightly, and the back of her throat had a fuzzy texture in it. Her mouth tasted like the smell of a decomposing rabbit. When she moved, her bare skin shifted against soft grains of earth and broke into the air. She wanted to burrow further into the sand, or press the grains together until they molded almost like flesh.

Somewhere in the distance, there was the sound of stone grinding against stone. Milky sunlight dawned in a moment and dusked the moment after. In that light, Irene glimpsed that she lay in a cave made of tree roots and earth, and then it was inky black again.

The Clarene’s voice moved through the air without an echo, velvet and deep. “If you don’t remember that I told you last night, I persuaded the Firebird to call off your quest. His demands went too far. The priestess can stop funding your sad, drunken sessions of self-pity.”

“Uhh…”

“I know it was just the one. I also undressed you, after you vomited on your shirt and my hooves. The Dierne hasn’t been a good influence on you.”

 _Neither have you,_ Irene thought, and was glad that she lacked the tongue to say it. _The beautiful princess at your ball, who could sing you out of one folly and into another—I’ll never be that person again. I have no other refuge, can’t claim to have once been Ire and after that been Iris; I was always only Irene._

“Without the Firebird’s aura surrounding your body, I can heal you now.” The Clarene’s voice sounded very close, and a familiar hand laid on Irene’s shoulder. “If you want me to.”

Irene surged forward and wrapped her arms around the dips in the goddess’s form, and enveloping the protuberances with her mouth—a hard chin, a soft earlobe, a breast. The Clarene moved her hands over her lover’s body, and at the goddess’ touch the scabs turned to scars, and the scars turned to supple skin. Irene felt as if there had been lightless fires, as if every hair on her skin had been a tiny wick, and the dry and brittle heat had been snuffed at last. Deep beneath the surface of Irene’s flesh, splinters of glass turned molten and seeped out as sweat that dropped into the earth as round beads. Irene alternately tensed at each wave of transformation, and groaned with relief as each wave passed, and keened with loss and then anticipation. She tasted the Clarene’s fingers as they stroked the stub of her tongue to its full length, no longer tasting only bitter bile but the sour, salty, sweet. In the darkness, she felt for the Clarene’s toothless, tongueless, bearded lips and tasted of them until the earth shook.

After that, Irene guided her lover’s fingers into her mouth again, guiding her fingernails to scrape across the back and root of her tongue.

“You want me to sever that again,” the Clarene said.

Irene remembered the girl in the bone box, who tried to tear the heart from the land, how the white fire whispered, _Take it, take it_ ; she remembered the halo around William’s head, and his resignation almost as if he wanted to be caught and stopped—but something else took his arm and drove his weapon into a helpless victim; she remembered what Althea had said about the unspoken, and Adilene’s limbs of white fire unseen. _"I’ll help you enough that one day you can tell the Clarene everything."_ Adilene had said.

The Clarene pulled away from her and asked, "Why?"

And Irene said: “Mircea still exists.”

*

Irene and the Clarene emerged from that cave without echoes and rejoined the rest of the West. They left Irene's tongue behind, binding the only three terrible words it had spoken.

 

* * *

 

Althea Altair ran through the orchard, and into a clearing. She breathed in laboured gasps, but without hesitation gave a forceful call: “Adilene! Adilene! Show yourself!” She stood in the clearing, trembling with tension more than weakness. She turned, searching, scoffing, “Come on! Mom!” After another round, some other rare, raw emotion came through her voice. “Mom?” Raggedly, keening, “Mommy?”

_“I said, up here!”_

Althea caught herself before she collapsed and rushed towards the tree from whose branches she heard Adilene’s voice, which continued, as if she knew that Althea was circling the trunk: “I’m not letting the ladder down, you always track mud on the rungs. Just keep to the middle of the clearing and I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Althea glowered at the tree trunk until the fissures between the bark began to seep with wreathes of smoke, which she reached out to catch. She rose until the streams of smoke rippled into clouds, and caught herself on a branch outside the window of Adilene’s tree house. 

Adilene heard the rustle of leaves, glanced outside the window, and sighed. “In a moment, I said! What could be so important that—”

Althea interrupted: “Lily Bell is unwell.”

“Tell the Clarene.” Adilene didn’t miss a beat, so Althea paused twice as long to make up for it. The priestess’ heavy breathing gave her a demeanor of fury (or perhaps fury weighed her breathing more than the run had.)

“I can’t say what ails her,” Althea said, haltingly and grimly as she clung to the tree branch. “You know what it is.”

“You won’t need to say what it is. Tell the Clarene.”

At that, Althea relaxed slightly. “It worked.”

“Nothing worked, of course—you just told me your twin is unwell. I won’t tell you a third time what to do about it.” Adilene pushed a pile of ropes out one passageway until they unfurled. “Wisdom. Hope. Willingness. That isn’t work.”

Althea Altair fixed her gaze on Adilene, with a reproachful expression.

Adilene replied, “If you knew that already, then what are you waiting for?”

“That wasn’t why—” Althea cut herself off. “Fine. I’ll meet you at the clearing.” She craned her neck to look around, seeking footholds in the tree.

Adilene paused at the rope stair. “Do you want to come in? You can just follow me down.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t track mud.”

Althea jumped from the branch into the tree house window. She landed with a thud.

“Are you all right?” Adilene asked, glancing back at the tree house. 

“No,” said the uninjured Althea Altair. “I tried to comfort the princess, tried to say that her life and 003’s weren’t the same. It came out a threat of dismemberment.”

“You’ve gotten much better at socializing, then,” Adilene replied, as she started to make her way down.

“After this is over, I’m going back to the temple and I’m never coming out—not even for your other daughter. I mean it.”

“That would be nice.” 

Adilene was humoring her, Althea could hear it in her voice. Althea sighed. “No, it wouldn’t be.”


End file.
